The Lock and Key Library
By Julian Hawthorne
I have never read this book before but if I had to guess I would assume it revolves around a library. I think a somewhat wealthy or at least upper-class man has a library in his house, and is trying to court a young woman, or the woman is in love with him. I think the man has an extravagant library in his house but keeps it rather concealed for certain, unknown reasons. She attempts to sneak through his house at the darkest hours of the night in attempt to unveil the secrets of the library.
Words that I think will be prevalent in the text: dark, stormy, key, library, fear, curious
Words that are prevalent: man, house, room, hand, eyes
While doing the project, I found that pretty much none of the terms I thought would be most common are the most common. In fact, the text focuses a lot on an entire house rather than just a library location within a house. I am assuming as well, that a lot of the novel’s curiosity (being a detective/crime novel) surrounds the man who owns the house because the word man is one of the most frequent throughout many segments in the novel. This observation can also be indicative of the tendency for male authors to depict male protagonists (or antagonists in this case?) at this time period. This raises all sorts of questions regarding gendered characters, such as if a male author has the agency/ability to depict a female persona (which I personally believe is possible). The line graphs are informative as well. Early on, the word “house” peaks at its highest usage, and then throughout the middle of the novel, the word “man” plateaus at a peak for much of the novel. The house in which the novel seems to be set is a main focus at the forefront of the novel, while the man (or men) who is a persona in the novel is the main focus for much of the remaining text. Also looking at the word connectivity, I found that the “house” was connected to words such as “haunted” and “went” “away”. These combinations not only identify gothic elements within the novel, but inform us about the setting and ocurences. This program is honestly really cool and useful. From my own personal experience, I was a research assistant for Dr. Karla Alwes and her book about John Keats. One aspect of my research included assembling a concordance of all the recurring/significant words across 4 of his major poems (The Lamia, The Fall of Hyperion, To Autumn and The Cap and Bells). This program would have made that job significantly easier to accomplish and I really wish I knew about it at the time. I think publishers, scholars, writers and teachers could all find this tool useful, not only to consciously see what is prevalent within a specific novel, but also to find trends across texts for research and future knowledge about literature.
Peter McKasty